Application Note: DDR3 ST-MRAM in Enterprise SSD

Utilizing Everspin ST-MRAM in an Enterprise SSD to greatly reduce power-fail energy storage while increasing SSD performance and density

 

Application Note:  As Enterprise SSDs continue to push the envelope in terms of system performance and smaller form factors, SSD solutions providers are facing greater challenges to increase performance and density while continuing to protect data-in-flight from power failures. NAND flash has not significantly increased in performance and the improvement in SSD performance is typically made by adding more parallel channels of flash. This increases the need for energy storage for power fail protection which in turn reduces space available for the storage array for a fixed form factor.

 

This app note explores the SSD architecture benefits of employing Everspin ST-MRAM on the DDR bus of the SSD controller to provide a high speed, nonvolatile write buffer in order to reduce power fail energy storage while increasing performance and storage density.